Google be punishing mobile sites using Intrusive pop-up ads

This can be a bad news for webmasters who were using intrusive pop-up ads on mobile sites for their benefits but its a great news for visitors access websites from mobile devices. After this update, there will be significant change in popup ads placement on mobile sites.

In the latest announcement made by Product Manager Doantom Phan at Official Google Webmaster Central Blog, mobile sites which are using interstitial covering whole or major part of the mobile screen could be punished.

Today when majority of the traffic on the website is coming through mobile devices, Google is continuously working hard to offer better user experience to the people.

We have seen several changes in algorithm for mobile sites in the past and giving better ranking to mobile friendly sites in search results was a major step the search giant had taken in April last year.

Google back in September 2015 announced that it will downgrade websites show full page mobile app ads asking people to install app.

The search engine tries to answer people queries in a best way, whether the answer resides on a webpage or in the app and started to punish websites show full page ads on the mobile forcing people to install the app.

In this latest announcement Google will crack down on mobile sites show intrusive ads which make the content less visible to the people.

It can be popup ad covering main part of the content that appears just after anyone taps the search results or while scrolling down to access whole of the content.

It also include interstitial blocking users from accessing any part of the content unless they close the advertisement.

Or the layout which lots of well known internet marketers use where above the fold portion is like a standalone intrusive ad.

While these are the some example of popup intrusive ads which may be punished starting January 10, 2017, the mobile sites which show popup to do the following aren’t going to be affected.

Verification of age of the users before given them access to particular content.

Consent on cookies.

Login dialogue box where the users must have to login before accessing content.

and the banners which don’t cover major portion of the page and made easy to dismiss.

While some webmasters may get confused what all mobile ads comply Google policy and wouldn’t result in punishment, MailMunch made it pretty simple for them !

In a blog post John Davier, explains how MailMunch takes care of this warning and offering great solution to the users of MailMunch.

John suggested to use Top bar email subscription box for the mobile sites while leaving it to the sole desecration of the webmasters whether they want to use it for desktop sites as well.

The top bar subscription box doesn’t cover much space on mobile site and is easy to dismiss by tapping.

You can see in the above screenshot, I’m using top bar to collect emails of interested people and it can be easily dismissed using big close button in case they chose to not subscribe.

The best part of MailMunch is the flexibility to show or not show particular subscription box for mobile / desktop sites. It can be easily turn on or off for mobile and desktop devices.

Apart from that, John suggested to use Embed form option for mobile sites which can be placed anywhere on the web pages. However pop subscription box for desktop is still a high converting option.

I use embed form at the end of the article and see some good results for mobile as well as desktop versions

Although the search giant informed webmasters well in advance, I recommend to experiment with the position and type of subscription box right from today so that you know which option is good to stick to.

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Sunil is the founder of Blogging an Art, Blogger & Internet Marketing Consultant. He likes to write about SEO, Affiliate marketing, Social media marketing, Email marketing and other related stuff. He is an active contributor at various tech blogs as well and loves to travel.

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About me

Besides being the founder of BloggingAnArt.com, I'm a Blogger & Internet Marketing Consultant. I've been active in Internet Marketing for about a decade and helped many businesses to grow their website traffic and sales multiple fold. Read more